The Real News Network has the series starting with Investigating the Saudi Government’s 9/11 Connection and the Path to Disilliusionment – Sen. Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt 1.

Here is an except talking about the report on 9/11 from the commission  that Senator Graham lead.

GRAHAM: There were 28 pages in the final report, out of over 800 total, which were totally censored from–that were word one to the end of that chapter. That was the chapter that largely dealt with the financing of 9/11, who paid for these very complex and in many instances expensive activities that were the predicate for 9/11. I was stunned that the intelligence community would feel that it was a threat to national security for the American people to know who had made 9/11 financially possible. And I am sad to report that today, some 12 years after we submitted our report, that those 28 pages continue to be withheld from the public.

JAY: Now, it’s fairly clear from your book what’s in the 28 pages, I mean, in general terms. The L.A. Times did a report on those 28 pages. A journalist for The L.A. Times spoke with someone who’d actually seen the 28 pages–didn’t reveal the name. But apparently it’s the actual names of the people in the Saudi government and Saudi royal family that are in on financing 9/11 conspirators. And your book makes it pretty clear that that’s what it’s about.

First of all, who ordered the redaction, that you weren’t allowed to say this?

GRAHAM: First, I’m going to have to withhold my comment on what you have just said. I am under the strictures of classification. I have–although it was written in 2002, I still have a reasonably good remembrance of what was in those 28 pages, but I’m frustrated because I can’t talk about it.

JAY: I know. And that’s why I quoted The L.A. Times and didn’t ask you.

This is much more than of historical interest. The very sources you hint at in this interview are probably now throwing great resources into getting us to go to war with Iran. I’d hate to think that the attack that gave Bush/Cheney what they needed to justify the war in Iraq will be repeated in order to get us to attack Iran.

Let us all make it clear that we see what is coming, and maybe that will discourage the people planning it.

It is galling to think that information is being kept from the American public that is absolutely vital for them to know as they make choices as to what actions this government should take in the near future.

Perhaps there ought to be a people’s filibuster until we find out what is in that 28 pages that we are not allowed to see.

I had not even seen this interview before I wrote my previous post Obama Rebukes Israeli-Saudi Attack on Iran Nuclear Deal.

See the second part of the interview in the subsequent post Revealing the 9/11 Conspiracy Would Undo the Entire US-Saudi Alliance.

Why Would Saudi Arabia Support the 9/11 Conspirators, Why Would the US Gov. Cover it Up? – Sen. Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt3

Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, believes that the Saudi government “had a high and what has thus far turned out to be credible expectation that their role” in 9/11 “would not be exposed” by the U.S. government.

Senator Graham had talked to the other co-chair of the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the two chairs of the citizen’s 9/11 commission about the possibility of the 19 hijackers acting independently.

“All three of them used almost the same word—implausible—that it is implausible that that could have been the case. Yet that has now become the conventional wisdom to the aggressive exclusion of other alternatives,” says Graham.

Here is the fourth and final piece of the interview – The 9/11 Conspiracy: Did Bush/Cheney Create a Culture of Not Wanting to Know? – Sen. Bob Graham on Reality Asserts Itself pt4.

On RAI with Paul Jay, Senator Bob Graham says there was a pervasive pattern in police and intelligence agencies and “you don’t have everybody moving in the same direction without there being a head coach somewhere who was giving them instructions as to where he wants them to move”

The Real News Network has the interview Obama Rebukes Israeli-Saudi Attack on Iran Nuclear Deal with Robert Parry.

PARRY: Well, the neoconservatives continue to want to see more wars in the Middle East. That’s what they’ve been pushing for now for 20-some years, going back to the ’90s, when they began to lay out this idea that the only way for Israel to maintain its security is through having regime change in a variety of countries–Iraq first, Syria, and Iran being a third. So that idea from the neocons hasn’t really shifted. And they remain a very influential force in Washington, particularly at places like The Washington Post. And so they’re continuing to push this idea that the way you get security in the Middle East is by going to war with and ultimately overthrowing governments that have difficult or hostile relations with Israel.

President Obama and the people in Congress who want peace are going to have some very powerful foes in Congress, in the news media, and in the leadership of Israel, and lobbyists for oil interests.

It will be impossible to stop the drum beat for war without massive support from the grass roots before the opponents even get full momentum behind their push. Keep watching for any opportunity you have to voice your opinion.

I just received this email – Update: Improvements to HealthCare.gov

View in browser | This newsletter created and distributed by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Update: Improvements to HealthCare.gov We’ve been working hard to fix the technical problems that some users have encountered on HealthCare.gov, and we’re happy to report that 90 percent of users are now able to create accounts. Click here to visit HealthCare.gov and fill out an application right now. If you’re looking for other ways to apply, here are three other options: – Call our Marketplace Call Center at 1-800-318-2596 and begin your application over the phone with one of our trained Call Center representatives, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. TTY users should dial 1-855-889-4325. – Visit a trained counselor to apply in person. Find one in your area here. – Download a paper application form and mail it in. If you want coverage that will start as early as January 1, 2014, the application deadline was recently extended to December 23, 2013. Don’t miss your opportunity to get the quality, affordable coverage you need. Use one of the methods above to apply today.

Strangely, the email is better formatted than the web site.

There is a From Alpha 2 Omega  podcast Oh So Reserved that is worth listening to.

This weeks our guest is Dan Kervick. By day Dan works in the book publishing industry. By night, Dan is an independent scholar, specialising in the work of the British Philosopher David Hume, and a regular blogger on progressive and egalitarian economics over on:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org

We discuss the institutional working of the banking system, how reserves really work, bubble blowing and the logic of quantitative easing, military Keynesianism, and the role of capital flows in the modern economy.

I think Dan has provided a good explanation of how things actually work in the economy and banking system. There are a few places that could stand further clarification, but there is only so much you can say in 45 minutes. One of the places that could use some extended discussion is the relation between the huge excess reserves of the banks and the loans that are not being made. Maybe Dan is right about one not causing the other, but it is more that one is a symptom of the other the other. (Correlation, not causation.  Or causation in the other direction.)

New Economic Perspectives has the article Loathsome Wall Street Deficit Hysterics: ‘Blame the Old and Sick, Not Us’ – Part 1.

So-called deficit spending, a not very descriptive term which I have called the “net contribution” of government to growth, is not a “Left-Right” issue if both Left and Right are agreeing to, in their own ways, continue to endorse or support a growing capitalist economy (or a monetary economy of some other description that encourages private savings). Contrary to popular and political wisdom of the moment, balancing a national government budget or targeting budget surpluses are not “good” and deficit spending is not “bad”.  In fact, the reverse is true: for most nations under most circumstances, national government budget balancing or budget surpluses are literally toxic for the economy while deficit spending is under many circumstances “good” for the economy. The conventional wisdom that issues from various neoclassically trained pundits of the Right or much of what passes for a “Left” nowadays, has, what is supposed to be sound, fiscal advice for monetarily sovereign governments, entirely inverted.  If capitalist economies are to grow, governments are literally compelled to spend on deficit to provide enough liquidity for the economy as well as provide the public services that benefit a complex economy and civilization; political and economic predators have exploited the link to bond sales and increasing “debt” repayment obligations to muddy the political and financial waters.

The article points to an interesting graph.

The above chart is what Janet Yellen was talking about when she mentioned fiscal drag as noted in my previous post Janet Yellen On Problems of Fiscal Drag.  If you read this properly, it explains why this recovery is not as strong as previous recoveries.  Previous recoveries did not suffer fiscal drag from Government policy 2 and 3 years after the start of recovery.  This recovery is the one suffering from the drag.  All the talk in Washington from both sides of the aisle seems to be about putting a little more drag on the economy, just when the above chart shows that what they are recommending is exactly the cause of the problem.

Maybe some in Washington can do the math, but they don’t seem able to read the graph.

For those who do not have magnifying glasses, the small print under the chart translates to “In the chart, the column for average recovery from postwar recessions excludes data that may contradict this thesis.” Or at least that is the way I translate it.  Well, you can’t always believe everything, or is that can’t ever believe anything.  Maybe we can believe the other two columns to the left of this one.

I am using a cheap shot to overplay the footnote to beat others to the punch.  In fact, if you want to compare the average of other other recessions to this one, then you do need to exclude this one from the average.  That takes care of the first part of the note.  The proviso for data limitations seems to only apply to the exclusion of the 1948-49 recession.  So, out of the goodness of  our heart, we can accept the exclusion of that data.  You also don’t want to include data from before the war, because the depression of the 1930’s is where we learned how not to ever make those mistakes again.  Well, the “not ever” part apparently didn’t last to 2009.

The New York Times has the article California, Here We Come? by Paul Krugman. The excerpt below explains the topic of the piece.

It goes without saying that the rollout of Obamacare was an epic disaster. But what kind of disaster was it? Was it a failure of management, messing up the initial implementation of a fundamentally sound policy? Or was it a demonstration that the Affordable Care Act is inherently unworkable?

So how would we  find the answer to the question?

At a time like this, you really want a controlled experiment. What would happen if we unveiled a program that looked like Obamacare, in a place that looked like America, but with competent project management that produced a working website?

Well, your wish is granted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you California.

I had vaguely heard about John Boner’s demonstration of the failure of the HealthCare.gov web site.  Paul Krugman does refer to it.

…a point inadvertently illustrated a few days ago by John Boehner, the speaker of the House. Mr. Boehner staged a publicity stunt in which he tried to sign up on the D.C. health exchange, then triumphantly posted an entry on his blog declaring that he had been unsuccessful. At the bottom of his post, however, is a postscript admitting that the health exchange had called back “a few hours later,” and that he is now enrolled.

And maybe the transaction would have proceeded faster if Mr. Boehner’s office hadn’t, according to the D.C. exchange, put its agent — who was calling to help finish the enrollment — on hold for 35 minutes, listening to “lots of patriotic hold music.”

I wonder if CBS will decide to cover any of the successes of ACA instead of concentrating on every flaw and glitch exclusively. Damn that liberally biased press. (Sarcasm in that last sentence, if you have trouble detecting it on your own.)

The Real News Network has this two part series starting with Vietnam and the Legacy of the JFK Presidency – Peter Kuznick on Reality Asserts Itself pt1.

On this episode of Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay and historian Peter Kuznick discuss whether or not JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam before his assassination

The second part is Vietnam and the Legacy of the JFK Presidency – Peter Kuznick on Reality Asserts Itself pt2.

On this episode of Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay challenges historian Peter Kuznick on JFK’s legacy in regards to the Vietnam War

You can see that between Kennedy’s public statement from moment to moment and his private statements to different people, that it is doubtful if we will ever end the debate about what he would or would not have done, had he lived through a second term.

The debate that The Real News Network promises might be very interesting, but I would really be surprised if it actually settled anything.

I read a headline in The Boston Globe today that there is a treasure trove of still secret documents about the assassination. I have not read the story yet, but I would wonder what the secrecy is about. Do we have to wait until every Kennedy descendant is gone? That might never happen.

The Real News Network has a series in two parts.  Former IAEA Inspector: Iran’s Nuclear Program Now Consistent with Peaceful Purposes pt1 .

Robert Kelley explains how Iran’s nuclear development is now consistent with power-production

Israel Denounces Deal In Spite of Substantive Concessions by Iran pt2.

Former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley says Israel’s criticism of agreement is unwarranted as it does not observe the non-proliferation treaty itself

Don’t complain that I only get my Isareali news from The Real News Network. If you read this blog enough to make that complaint, then you knew I was going to do this. Read the introduction to this blog.

I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.

McClatchy DC has the article President Obama Delivers A Statement On Iran. There is good news and bad news in this article.  Let me start with what I consider the bad news in these words of President Obama.

Since I took office, I have made clear my determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. As I have said many times, my strong preference is to resolve this issue peacefully, and we have extended the hand of diplomacy. Yet for many years, Iran has been unwilling to meet its obligations to the international community. So my Administration worked with Congress, the U.N. Security Council and countries around the world to impose unprecedented sanctions on the Iranian government.

There is stuff in here that is obviously put there for domestic consumption, but is of questionable truth or  at least it is deceptive. “…we have extended the hand of diplomacy” should come with the additional information that while we extended the hand of diplomacy  we have also extended the hand of the sucker punch at the same time.

Here is another quote from the President.

We approach these negotiations with a basic understanding: Iran, like any nation, should be able to access peaceful nuclear energy. But because of its record of violating its obligations, Iran must accept strict limitations on its nuclear program that make it impossible to develop a nuclear weapon.

It is not so clear that Iran violated its obligations when in fact they may have been reacting to the sucker punch that we delivered to them while they were looking at our hand of diplomacy.

Okay, so here is some good news:

Over the last few years, Congress has been a key partner in imposing sanctions on the Iranian government, and that bipartisan effort made possible the progress that was achieved today. Going forward, we will continue to work closely with Congress. However, now is not the time to move forward on new sanctions – doing so would derail this promising first step, alienate us from our allies, and risk unraveling the coalition that enabled our sanctions to be enforced in the first place.

Perhaps the sanctions are what worked and perhaps it was the sudden United States’ decision to stop issuing the sucker punch with every diplomatic offer that created this opportunity.  President Obama is finally pleading with our own war mongers to please refrain from adding a new sucker punch to the deal before we have a chance to see if diplomacy alone can work.

As in other grass roots successes of recent days (the end of the filibuster), it is up to the grass roots to put enough pressure on Congress and the President to not try a sucker punch when it will destroy the opportunity. It would be a sad day if there were more pressure from the grass roots to promote a sucker punch than there is pressure to stick to diplomacy.

I seem to be giving a lot of advice lately, and am feeling rather ambivalent over whether I am just doing too much meddling.  I thought about the video below that I had seen a long time ago.  I figured that it would be appropriate to put it on my blog so I wouldn’t have to search for it the next time I needed to view it.